Barcelona Does Things to A Person
Good things
Paid subscribers, listen to the audio version - narrated by me - here
If there is anywhere in the world that soothes my soul, it’s Barcelona. This gorgeous, raucous, vibrant city is a place that pulls me back time and again, especially when I want to reset, recharge and feel more like myself again.
Last week I found myself in a situation where I desperately needed that reset. As I wrote about a few weeks back, my husband and I have been hanging out in Tirana, Albania. Although the city is great, we’ve been going through some personal stuff that has been anything but. It all culminated in a particularly stressful visit to an Albanian health clinic (a story for another time perhaps). I went home, had a big cry, and said to my husband:
I wish I was in Barcelona.
Why don’t we go, he said. Our time here is nearly up anyway and there are flights to Barcelona available next week.
A week later, we touched down on BCN soil. I almost cried when we cruised into the city on the airport bus, seeing the familiar places on the way, knowing I was in my favorite place on earth. Within just a few days, it’s worked its magic. I’m feeling more like myself than I have done in weeks.
As I often do when I’m pounding city streets, I did some deep thinking. This time, I asked the question - what can this city (and the way people live their lives here) teach us about living with intention?
Boy, did BCN come up with the goods.
Living a simple life gives you options
I find it laughable that so many people believe living a simpler existence means living with fewer options. The word deprivation gets bandied about more often than I would like.
The reality is that living simply gives you a whole heap of options you may not previously have had access to. For my part, that includes heading to Barcelona on a week’s notice. I can do that precisely because of my simple life. If I had a million commitments - from a full diary to a big house - visiting Barcelona wouldn’t even be part of the discussion. There wouldn’t be the time or the money.
Whatever options may look like for you, they are there for the taking once you strip away all the unnecessary crap from life. This is something I want to write about more in the coming weeks.
The size of your house does not directly correlate to the happiness of your kids
Last night my husband and I visited a friend of ours, a British dude who lives here with his wife and 5-year-old son.
This is a family of three living in close quarters. One tiny bathroom, one small kitchen / diner / living room, two small bedrooms, and zero outside space. Did the lack of space seem to bother the kid? Not a bit of it.
I’d not met his kid before but heard from mutual friends that he was a bit of a legend. Happy, chilled out, and fun. They weren’t wrong. Here was a five-year-old doing as all five-year-olds do, running about, enjoying himself, and proudly showing me his Pokemon card collection. A truly lovely kid.
I hear too many parents claim they need a huge house with a massive garden in order to keep their kids content but I’ve met too many happy Spanish kids living in apartments like my friend’s to agree. The way these parents tell it, it’s not the size of your living quarters that make the difference to how happy your kids are. If that was true, there would be no unhappy kids in large houses.
Being with my friend’s kid was a great reminder of that.
Online friendships are more valuable than you think
Something rather lovely happened this weekend - I got to meet my friend
of the excellent Substack for the first time in person. Like me, Rocco is an online writer and you may be familiar with his work - we cross-promote each other a lot. We’ve spent about 6 months talking online most days but this was the first time we’d met in person. The four of us - Rocco, his partner, my husband and I - hung out, drank vermouth, ate seafood, and spent a happy afternoon getting to know one another a little better.One thing that struck me was that it was an easy transition from online into real-life friendship because we already know each other pretty well. Rocco in fact probably knows me better than many of my friends IRL because he reads my work (as is the case with many online writers, most of my friends don’t read anything I write).
The internet has many flaws but the ability to make true online friendships is not one of them. Too many people dismiss them as “not real” but that’s not the case at all. Which is good news for us all - there are billions of people on the internet which means there are billions of opportunities to make friendships. And Lord knows most of us could do with a few more of those.
The best days are the simplest
On Sunday I did precisely five things. I walked, I ate, I drank, I napped and I chatted with my husband for hours.
It was an incredibly simple day and yet it was the best one of 2023 so far.
In my experience, the simple days are often the best, but they come about too seldom for my liking. Too often we have more pressing matters to attend to like chores, errands, work, childcare, and appointments. Whilst we may not be able to escape these every single day, we should - we must - give ourselves permission to escape them sometimes. And the simpler we make our lives, the more we can enjoy these simple days.
I'm old enough (and geeky enough) to remember a time when the World Wide Web was still young (early-to-mid 90s) and online friends were something to be treated with suspicion. You'd think attitudes would have changed in a generation!
Given enough time and exposure online, I don't think it's too big of an ask to have a reasonably good handle of the sort of person you're dealing with. I've had more than enough conversations and read more than enough of your writing to figure that you and Sam are good people!
Great points about simple living leading to more options, not fewer. So true. And, even better point about online friendships. We enjoyed meeting you and Sam. You guys are just as nice and down to Earth as we expected. Looking forward to doing it again.